


think you're gonna break my heart

by AugustaByron



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: But That's Not A Happy Thing, F/F, Femslash, Fertility Issues, Mates, Origin Story, Trope Subversion/Inversion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-23
Updated: 2013-09-23
Packaged: 2017-12-27 10:29:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/977694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AugustaByron/pseuds/AugustaByron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It happens when Kali goes to Beacon Hills to deal with the Argent situation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	think you're gonna break my heart

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for: Canon-level depictions of violence
> 
> Title from Marina and the Diamonds' Power and Control.

It happens when Kali goes to Beacon Hills to deal with the Argent situation.

“I'll be back,” Kali says in the morning, slipping out while Julia is still in bed. She doesn't say when. She never does. It probably won't be more than a week. Beacon Hills is in Northern California, and they're tucked up in the mountains of Montana, where hunters don't come. Kali won't want to get involved just because some beta has gotten himself shot.

Julia is fine hanging out at home with the rest of the pack—she doesn't like the van that they use for pack travel--Lucy sings the _worst_ road trip songs, and Kali gets weird and possessive about driving even though she has the world's worst sense of direction, and Josh has the world's smallest bladder and makes them stop at every rest stop, so it always takes about twice as long as it should to get anywhere.

It's just that Julia's appointment at the clinic is on Tuesday, and it's going to suck to go alone.

Kali calls every night, though, and she sounds about as sorry as she ever does. “Are you going to be okay on your own, babe?” she asks on Monday evening.

“I'll be fine,” Julia says. She's trying to come up with a fifth reading question for her freshmen—Lord of the Flies. Julia hates Western literature, but the school board is being tetchy about letting her teach a women's literature class. There haven't exactly been comments about “that rancher of yours,” but Julia knows they're coming.

Kali sighs, a rush of static over the line. “I hate that I'm not going to be there,” she admits. “We're meeting with the Hales tomorrow, though.” And since meeting with Talia Hale is the whole point of going to California, it's not like Kali could come home earlier.

“It's just like going to the gyno,” Julia says. She tucks the phone between her ear and her shoulder so she can scribble down something about foils—Jack, Ralph, blah blah blah. “Except that by the time you come back I could be knocked up.”

Julia can picture Kali's face softening, the way her eyes get warm, the way her mouth loses its constant smirk. “I still think we could just do it at home. We'd have a better chance of getting a wolf if we use someone from the pack.”

“Uh, no,” Julia laughs. “I'd rather not ask Rick to jerk off in a cup for me. And we've still got a fifty-fifty chance, you know I've been taking brews.” That's what Kali calls her herbal draughts, with their smell of magic and mint—witches' brews.

Kali grumbles, but affectionately. Julia knows the difference. “Fine. Get someone to drive you, that stupid truck can't handle the mountain roads.”

“Bonnie is taking the morning off of work,” Julia says. She tilts her head and her mess of brown hair all falls directly into her eyes—this is the problem with having a partner who steals every single one of the hair ties in the house. “Ugh. Will you still love me if I cut off all my hair? Get a mommy do?”

“Nope,” Kali says promptly. “Long or nothing, never cut it if you still want me to love you.” There's a noise in the background, what sounds like Lucy and Josh fighting about something. “Listen, Julia, I've got to go. I love you, okay?”

“I know,” Julia says to the empty phone line, grinning. Kali has the worst phone etiquette.

\----- 

The van doesn't roll back onto the ranch until one evening two weeks later, when Julia is just about to steal Bonnie's car—Kali was right, Julia's truck can barely make it into town--and drive to Beacon Hills herself. Kali's calls dropped off three days ago, and Julia's been blowing up her voicemail ever since.

“I'm going to kill you,” Julia says when Kali drops out of the driver's seat of the van. Kali looks tired and haunted, and she's wearing an unfamiliar men's shirt, blue and plaid and ugly, and she is the best thing that Julia has ever seen.

She throws herself at her alpha, the love of her life, and buries her head in Kali's shoulder. “Kill you dead,” she says into Kali's shirt. It smells like aftershave, maybe like smoke. Not like Kali at all.

Kali's arms come up around her, wrap around her shoulders and squeeze, just this side of too tight.

“I'm sorry,” Kali says, hoarse. Like maybe she spent the entire drive yelling at the betas, or else hasn't said a word the whole way home.

Julia nearly chokes on air—Kali never, never apologizes. It led to horrible fights and temporary breakups early on, before Julia learned to read the sorries in Kali's slumped shoulders, her pitiful attempts at making pork chops and cheese grits for dinner, even though she prefers her meat a little more red and bleeding.

“What happened?” Julia asks, instead of making a big deal of it. She tries to pull away a little, but Kali clamps down harder, clinging.

“I'm sorry,” Kali repeats. Julia hears the other van doors opening and closing, footsteps as the betas make themselves scarce.

“Kali, what happened?” Julia asks again, starting to get alarmed. Two apologies. Just for not calling for a few days? It's fine now, Kali is fine. Well, it's not fine, if Kali didn't seem so shaken up there would be some choice words to be had, words about at least calling to say she hasn't died horribly.

Julia has heard bad things about the Argents, after all. They've got that daughter, the one being trained to take over the whole family. She heard about what the girl did in Oklahoma last year. Kali and radio silence and Kate Argent all in one place mean that Julia's been lying awake at night, chasing phantoms in her mind and pouring all her energy into the defensive wards on the ranch.

“Can we just go inside?” Kali asks, still not loosening her grip on Julia.

“Okay,” Julia says, not able to keep her worry out of her voice. Kali _whimpers_ , and Julia feels claws prick her shoulders. “Okay,” she says, more gently, trying to untangle herself. “Let's just go have dinner.”

Kali resists the untangling process, but eventually Julia is able to pull away enough to get them moving, although Kali's hands are still on her body, one at Julia's waist, the other desperately clutching her hand, and Kali herself plastered to Julia's back. It makes for a slow walk into the house, but Julia once sent an omega running with just a handful of mountain ash and a strong flashlight.

This is nothing.

Kali doesn't seem up to eating at the table—that would require separate chairs—so Julia heats up some of yesterday's stew and they eat on the couch, legs draped over each other. Kali doesn't say anything, but occasionally she reaches out and touches Julia's face, her arm, her hair.

“Shower,” Julia decides, trying to keep a lid on her slowly rising panic. Kali isn't willing to be alone here, either, so Julia strips down with her lover and showers with her. For maybe the first time, a naked and wet Kali isn't erotic. Not when she's shaken and quiet, and refusing to talk about what happened in Beacon Hills.

It must have been very bad, though. Kali isn't given to breakdowns.

It's only later, when they're in bed—naked, pajamas seemed like too much of an effort, and they've got a heavy quilt anyway—that Kali says, in a cracked voice, “Something happened.”

“I figured,” Julia says, and tries to take deep breaths, keep her heartbeat steady. If Kali hears her distress, it will only make things worse. “Can you tell me about it?”

Kali's hands come to Julia's waist and tighten, briefly. “I—there was—do you remember Ennis?”

“The alpha whose beta got killed,” Julia supplies, and Kali makes a noise in the very back of her throat, a canine noise, more wolf than Julia has ever heard her.

“He,” Kali begins, and stops, letting out a quiet sob. “I'm so sorry.”

Ice starts in Julia's belly and spreads quickly, working its way to all her limbs. “Did you and he--?” She can't finish the question. It's unthinkable. Kali hears it, though, and grabs her waist again.

“No—Julia, _no_. We didn't. I wouldn't. But he's. He's my mate,” Kali says, and Julia stares past her lover's face on the next pillow, into the darkness of their bedroom.

Mates. It's not a myth, of course. Julia has been an emissary long enough to know that. But it's rare. Mates. Destiny. The words swirl in Julia's brain until she's dizzy.

“But you've met him before,” she says, barely aware of how she's still able to speak.

“We'd never touched,” Kali says. “It was—just one touch. I brushed his arm. And we knew.”

Julia takes stock. Mates are supposed to be a happy thing. She thinks about going to the clinic three towns over with Bonnie, of putting her feet in the stirrups and waiting for some donor's sperm to make its way to her egg, to give her and Kali a baby. She thinks about the way Kali looked the night they took their oath as alpha and emissary, in the light of the full moon. About Kali's eyes, burning red as she loses control underneath Julia in their bed, in this bed.

“It's okay,” she makes herself say. “If you—it's okay.”

“I'm not going to let it win,” Kali promises, pulling Julia close. “It's just biology. Just some stupid myth. It's not going to ruin us.”

“Okay,” Julia says, because Kali has never lied to her, not once. “Okay.”

\----- 

There is actual pack business to take care of, too, not just the Ennis issue. Julia has to wait until the official meeting to hear about the whole sordid tale—Argent's betrayal, Deucalion's blindness, Deucalion being forced to kill his own beta to survive.

It send the pack rumbling, though, the news that an alpha has killed one of his own. “He was protecting himself,” Kali snaps, and that's that. Julia understands.

Life continues. It's normal. Kali wakes up at dawn every day and goes to take care of the horses and ride out with the sheep. Julia continues to pray her way to school in her thousand-year-old pickup every day, always sure that this is the moment it breaks down and Julia falls off a cliff, and tries to cram decent books into the heads of teenagers. Bonnie and Lucy continue to fight over everything, the way sisters always do, while the rest of the pack roll their eyes.

And Kali doesn't mention Ennis, not once. It's enough to unravel the knot of anxiety that's been forming in Julia's gut since that night.

And then she gets her period.

“It's okay,” Kali says, handing her a bowl of homemade ice cream and settling down on the couch with her. Julia is curled under the afghan her grandmother crocheted, trying not to cry.

“It's okay,” Kali says again, smoothing a hand over Julia's hair. “We'll try again. Lots of couples don't get pregnant the first time.”

“I know,” Julia sniffs, trying to remember that half of this is hormones. “I just--” wanted it. Wanted to make sure, in a way.

Kali would never leave her kid. Not even for her destined mate. Does it make Julia a horrible person? Is she one of those women who wants kids to mend a broken relationship?

“I know, babe,” Kali says, and kisses the crown of Julia's head. “You want to watch Sleepless in Seattle?”

It's a sacrifice for sure. Kali hates any movie that doesn't involve kung fu or explosions.

“Yeah,” she says, and Kali gets up to put in the DVD. It's not a broken relationship, Julia remembers. It's just Kali having an urge. Like any physical urge.

Her alpha has impeccable control. She never yells at the pack, never lets the moon overtake her. Ennis is just one more instinct, no more important than any other.

They're going to make it through this. Julia knows.

\----- 

Julia likes books. Good ones, novels and biographies and histories, anything that's interesting. It comes in handy, because Kali can't research to save her life. She finished high school, and then hung out in Seattle for a few years.

Julia didn't know until a year into their relationship, but Kali was just in the city for a weekend when she met Julia. She stuck around until Julia finished undergrad, got her teaching license.

So in between teaching her freshmen about good and evil and the nature of mankind, managing study hall for unruly seniors, and casting her annual blessing for good health on the sheep, Julia hits the books.

The big, heavy, leather-bound magic books. Julia has spent years acquiring her library, beginning from the time she was eight and first realized other girls couldn't light candles with their minds, and that normal girls didn't talk to the seal-women out in the harbor. That normal girls couldn't even hear the human voices of the seal-women, the selkies.

Ever since she joined Kali's pack, those books have become very weighted towards werewolves. So there's something in here about mates. Maybe a way to get around it. A spell, a purifying brew, something.

Kali doesn't really like to read. It's a sticking point, sometimes, but right now it's nice—the hum of the TV in the background as Julia combs through dusty books, searching for an answer to their problem.

The books all say the same thing.

Mates are forever. Mates are rare. Mates are spectacular and beautiful. All it takes is one touch for a werewolf to recognize a mate. It is always reciprocated. A mate is the most important thing in a wolf's life. Nothing else matters. It's magic, or instinct, or both, living in that same space where the change does, biological and supernatural all at once.

There is no mention of how to break it. As far as Julia can tell, nobody has ever tried. Why would they?

It's beautiful, and perfect, and impossible to resist.

Julia slams the book shut and goes to the couch. The news is on, and Kali is watching and occasionally muttering things under her breath, things like, “Idiots,” and “You call that a crop circle?” She's relaxed, a bottle of beer going slowly warm against her thigh, hair a mess from a long day outside.

Julia drops over Kali's lap, straddles her legs. “Hi,” she says.

“Hi.” Kali smiles up at her, sets the beer down on the coffee table. Julia doesn't bother telling her to get a coaster. It doesn't matter. It's just a table. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Yeah,” Julia says, looking down, letting her eyes trace the curve of Kali's smirk, the line of her jaw. It's just another spell, another trick. This is what's real. “I did.”

\----- 

Three full moons, three periods, later Kali has a surprise.

It's big, and garishly purple, and Julia can't help but stare at it.

“I know it's different,” Kali says, biting her lip, like she hasn't just pulled a giant dildo and a new harness out from under the bed like it's no big deal. Kali doesn't really like toys, sometimes acts jealous of Julia's vibrator.

“You shouldn't smell like plastic,” she'll say, and tackle Julia down onto the bed, and make her forget that there's anything but what Kali gives her.

“It's fine,” Julia says, smiling brightly. Maybe too brightly. But it's weird. Kali likes to be in charge, likes to be on top, doesn't really like giving Julia too much control. There's nothing wrong with wanting to switch it up, of course. It's just never happened before.

“Yeah?” Kali asks, and peels off her bra. And, well. Julia is definitely okay with this.

But later, when Julia is fucking her with the enormous fake cock, Kali's eyes slam closed, and she howls, and moans, “Enn--” before her words cut off and she comes, screaming, and Julia doesn't stop, even though something in her cracks.

\----- 

They don't talk about it. It's fine. Just an instinct.

Only maybe Julia is a little more short with Kali than usual, and maybe Kali gets up even earlier to take the sheep to graze, farther up the mountain than she needs to go. And it carries over to the pack, who pick up on the tension.

People are fighting more. Josh and Sam nearly come to blows over who gets the last roll at the weekly pack dinner.

“Everybody calm down!” Kali screams, eyes blazing red, and Julia didn't even see her stand up. But Kali's chair is tipped over, and her claws are out, digging into the table, scarring the wood.

The pack quiets. Ten werewolves stare at Kali, shocked and cowed. And Julia reaches out to cover Kali's hand with her own, but Kali jerks away.

“I'm going on a ride,” Kali grits out, and stalks out of the house, towards the barn.

The pack looks at Julia. “She's just frustrated,” she says, and Bonnie makes an understanding noise.

“The baby?” Bonnie asks. Of course the pack knows she hasn't gotten pregnant, even though it's been five visits to the clinic, and they even talked to Rick about switching donors to see if that worked better.

“Yeah,” Julia says, knowing they can hear her lying, and not caring at all. She shoves back from the table and follows Kali out of the house, to the barn.

It smells like clean straw and horses and leather, all the Kali-smells, and even though Julia isn't a wolf she understands this, how important it is to be able to recognize Kali with her eyes closed.

“Kali?” she calls when she gets to the barn door. It's open, and there's even a light on. Just a dim bulb, but it's enough.

Kali is standing a little ways off, in front of one of the empty stalls. Her face is buried in something blue and plaid and ugly. It's the shirt she came home from Beacon Hills wearing. And Julia may not have a wolf's ears, but she can hear Kali crying, sobbing, into the cloth.

It's Ennis's shirt. Julia knows this like she knows the feel of Kali's lips on her own.

And like she knows now that they're not going to get through this. Not through mates and instincts and whatever it is that has Kali pulling away.

“The pack is upset,” Julia says, fighting to keep her voice steady. Kali jerks around, like this is the first time she's noticed Julia standing behind her. Like she didn't hear Julia coming.

Kali has been attuned to Julia's heartbeat for years. Since the first time they met, Julia hasn't been able to sneak up on her.

Now, though, Kali is whirling around, not even bothering to put the shirt down, or tuck it back into its hiding place. She's snarling, her eyes are bright red, and for the very first time, Julia stops before getting within arms reach of Kali, because this is a wolf in front of her. A werewolf.

“I am trying,” Kali snarls, fangs out. “I am trying, I am fighting this, every single day I am fighting the urge to leave you, leave my pack, and go to him. Because I want you, and this, and our children. And everything in me is telling me that I don't. So cut me some slack, okay?”

“Okay,” Julia agrees, shaken. “Okay.”

Kali stalks out of the barn, shoving past Julia, making her stumble.

She's still holding the shirt.

\----- 

From the first moment Julia met Kali, she was a goner.

It was freshman year of college, back when Julia was throwing herself into anything witch-like she could find. The feminist group, who talked about the power of woman and magic as a historical gendered force. A local coven, even though she figured out early on that she was the only one with real magic. The rest of the Wiccans are cool ladies, though, very into balance, which Julia can roll with.

Some of the women from the coven wanted to go out tonight, for Halloween, and Julia tagged along, armed with her new fake ID. They went to a lesbian bar—not that Julia knew that before she walked in the door and realized there were only women around, and that Robyn was playing on a jukebox.

“I didn't know it was this kind of place,” she says, surprised, and Clover—not her real name, her chosen one—raises her eyebrows.

“Yeah, but you're gay, right?” Clover shrugs, like this is common knowledge, not something nobody has ever said about Julia.

Julia blinks. She thinks about being alone in her room, making all the furniture float when she touches herself, who she's picturing.

“Yeah,” she says. “I just didn't know there was a gay bar this close to campus.”

Clover smiles at her and says, “I'm going to get a beer, okay? You want?”

“I'm fine,” Julia says. It's the full moon. The things that go bump in the night are out. She needs to keep a clear head. She takes a stool next to the bar and sits, chin propped up on her hand, waiting for Clover to come back.

Julia has always attracted magic things to herself, things that could smell her power. That's why, when the werewolf slides onto the stool next to her and smiles with too many teeth, she's not surprised.

“Now, what's a pretty thing like you doing out on a night like this?” The werewolf says, inhaling deeply. Julia rolls her eyes—not even bothering to be subtle, is she?

“What's someone like you doing out on a full moon?” she shoots back. If they're not going to dodge around the subject, this conversation will be much easier.

The werewolf smirks. “I can look after myself. You, though. You'd better be careful, or--”

“Or what?” Julia says, bored already. She's got more power than this damn wolf knows. She's got aconite in her purse, and a spell for fire ready on her lips. “Or somebody will eat me up?”

The wolf slides closer. She says in a low voice, “Maybe I will. If you ask nicely.”

That's when Julia realizes something.

“Holy shit, you're flirting with me!” she blurts out, and instantly turns red. The werewolf laughs, loudly and openly, drawing stares. She doesn't seem to notice, or care.

“What did you think was happening, witch?” she asks. Now that the context is different, Julia can see that the werewolf is gorgeous, and probably deadly. She's giving off power in waves. Alpha.

“I thought we were threatening each other,” Julia admits.

“If that was your idea of a threat, you need protection,” the werewolf decides, and sticks out her hand. “I'm Kali.”

“Julia,” she says, and when she touches Kali's hand it feels like magic.

\----- 

Julia comes out of the bathroom to find Kali sitting at the kitchen table, slumped over dejectedly. “Maybe we should stop trying,” Kali says. She sounds heartbroken.

Julia's pulse quickens. She tries not to think about Ennis's shirt hidden away, or the fact that Kali was gone this morning when she woke up. “It's just one more month,” she says instead. “We could try Rick next. He said he was up for it.”

Kali looks up and tries to smile. It wobbles on her lips for a second, then falls off. Julia looks around their kitchen, in the house where Kali grew up. The place they've carved out for themselves, among family history and pack squabbles and the fight that left Kali without a brother, back before Julia met her, before Kali was an alpha.

It's their home. Theirs. Not Ennis's, no matter what the magic says. Magic is just a tool. Julia is a witch, she knows that. She's always known magic, and it knows her. Now she calls herself an emissary, but Kali keeps to the old word. Like they're still young and in the city, not real adults with a pack and a box of pregnancy tests in the bathroom cupboard.

This is _their_ home. Julia knows it, decorated it, dodges around the stupid witch knick knacks that Kali keeps buying with limited grace.

Every Halloween, Kali gives her something witch themed. In honor of their anniversary.

Kali claims that's their anniversary, anyway, (“Because I was yours the second I met you,” she says) even though Julia prefers to use their real anniversary, the day they decided they were a couple, not for two months after Halloween.

The decorations stay up all year. Julia's got quite a collection at this point—an apron covered with broomsticks and black cats, salt and pepper shakers shaped like pointed hats, a novelty candy bowl that looks like a green and warty face.

Ennis doesn't belong here, among all of this.

She's looking at a carved wooden block that sits on the windowsill—a black silhouette of a woman flying over a full moon—when Kali says, “Deucalion called. He wants to have a meeting. In Beacon Hills.”

“Why Beacon Hills?” Julia asks. Beacon Hills is where Kali met Ennis. A whole year ago, now. A year of Kali slowly turning away from her while she's fast asleep, a year of fights and never saying what they mean, a year of feeling like—knowing that—she's losing the love of her life.

Julia hates it Beacon Hills, almost as much as she hates Ennis and Deucalion and Talia Hale, for being the reasons that Kali was there in the first place.

“There was a fire,” Kali says. “The Hale pack—they're all dead. Deucalion wants to have a meeting of all the packs in the region to discuss defense.”

“The whole pack?” Julia asks. That's a lot of time away from the ranch. They do fine when it's just a few people away, but everyone at once?

“Yes,” Kali says, still sounding broken. It's strange—yes, the news about the Hales is sad, but Kali doesn't usually care about outsiders, and Julia never met them, so Kali isn't picking up on anything Julia is feeling. “The whole pack. You, too.”

“That will leave the mountain unprotected,” Julia says, but the words are hollow. The mountain will be fine. It's quiet here. The haven't even had any omegas pass through for three years. It's just the look on Kali's face that's making her hesitate.

She looks hopeless. Julia's never seen that expression before. She wants it gone.

“Please,” Kali says. “I need you to come with me. I need all of you to come with me.”

“Okay,” Julia says, “Okay.”

\----- 

They take over half a motel when they get to the city. Beacon Hills is depressing, and half-abandoned, and smells like fire. There's something in the air here, something _wrong_ , some power that Julia can't quite get out of the back of her mind. It sits there, itching.

“I don't like this place,” she tells Kali. “How long is this going to take?”

Kali is grim, straight-faced. “Not long,” she says. “I just have to meet Deucalion and take care of something. Then this will all be over.”

Julia isn't invited to that meeting. She knows the drill—keep the emissary as quiet as possible. Other packs think she's just Kali's girlfriend. That works. Julia likes being underestimated.

“Julia,” Kali says, suddenly urgent, reaching out. Julia has some strange magic throbbing in her skull, and her girlfriend hasn't opened her eyes during sex once in the last two months, and she is so desperately tired of trying to hold onto something that wants to run away from her.

She lets Kali kiss her, and pretends it doesn't feel like a door closing, like goodbye.

\----- 

She follows the dark taint of blood on the air, the scars from the broken pack-bond.

It felt like getting her own heart ripped out, when the first beta died. Julia screamed and screamed before she was able to get up and hobble out of the motel, towards the pain and flares of power.

Julia is still connected to Kali. Can still feel her. Whatever is out there—Deucalion?--hasn't gotten to her alpha yet.

The trail leads her to the forest. Closer and closer to that thing in the back of her head, something that feels ancient and dark, reaching branches into the sky. But no—not branches.

By the time she finds Kali, she's already exhausted. She's felt them all—Karen and Rick and Lucy and Bonnie and Josh—while they died. She's clinging to the thread that ties her to Kali, the last remaining member of her pack.

The first thing Julia notices is that Kali isn't wearing shoes.

The second thing Julia notices is that Kali is covered in blood.

“It was you,” she says, not able to stop herself, even though it makes Kali turn around and face her. Her eyes are red, her face is more fang than flesh, and Julia has never been afraid this way, not in her entire life.

“Julia,” Kali growls, and starts moving towards her. Julia reaches into her pocket for the sprinkling of mountain ash that she brought with her to Beacon Hills.

 _Believe_ , she tells herself. She can do this, she's been casting spells since she was a kid.

But never with Kali walking towards her like that, bare feet and blood on the forest floor. She can't make herself believe in this moment, that it's real, that Kali killed her whole pack, that she's about to kill Julia.

“You killed your pack,” Julia says, scrambling backwards, ready to throw up the ash, make a ring around herself. But her hand won't move. She can't make herself do it. This isn't real.

“It was the only way,” Kali says, guttural. “It was the only way I could be with him.”

Ennis. It's always Ennis now, Ennis in the cracks of their life, hiding in the shadows, just a name, an unseen presence. Julia wonders, insanely, what he even looks like. If he's as crazy about Kali as she is for him.

“You don't have to do this,” Julia says, knowing it's hopeless. She knew this morning when Kali kissed her, knew a week ago when Kali hatched a plan to go to Beacon Hills, knew a year ago when Kali came home and gave Julia the only two apologies of their relationship.

“I'm sorry,” Kali says, and Julia fights down the flash of shock. That's three.

And then Kali is attacking, feet first, claws flashing, and all Julia knows is pain.

\----- 

Kali is walking away, feet bare, and Julia _can't feel her_. She can't feel her, like all those promises they made meant nothing, like their house meant nothing, like the book of baby names Kali bought four months ago meant nothing.

And over the severed connection—there's no pack anymore, of course there's no connection—there is a surge in Julia's brain.

 _Power. Magic_. _Close._

_Life._

Julia starts to crawl.  

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [into dust](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1710548) by [FreshBrains](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreshBrains/pseuds/FreshBrains)




End file.
